“Tots ls’èssèrs humans nèsion librès yalsi l’mémmè soi l’dignitat è sois ls’dréts. En son donats l’razyon è l’cònçyènça, è dèvon azir-sè entrè lis soi un epperit dè l’frèrènitat.”
This is a Marselian translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1. It translates to “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Marselian is a constructed language (conlang for short) developed by Revere sophomore Ayushman Mukherjee. It draws primarily from Vulgar Latin but has influences from various other romance languages, such as French. Mukherjee is a language prodigy, having skipped French III onto French IV and fooling the most experienced speakers into believing it was his native tongue. RHS French teacher Diane Gerspacher can attest to this.
“Even when I first met him as a freshman last year in French II, I actually thought he was a native speaker when he first spoke,” Gerspacher said.
Mukherjee attributes this mastery to hundreds of nights over the last four years spent researching and translating anything he could to and from French. While initially taking French so he could be in a class with his friends, his interest went far beyond, to the point of reading academic papers about the diachronic of Old French conjugation for fun.
“Initially, the reason I took French was just because I wanted to be in a class with my friends. Yet, combined with my affinity for history and cartography, I found myself scouring Wikipedia articles to learn more and more about France itself throughout the ages,” Mukherjee said.
One teacher who observed his drive and interest was middle school language teacher Veronica Neubert, Mukherjee’s first French teacher.
“[Mukherjee] is very driven. He’s motivated. He would investigate things on his own and just cultural and linguistic things, repetition, and just a lot of practice, but he has to be very highly self-motivated, which he was as I remember, and it’s nice to see that he still is now,” Neubert said.
Skipping a language level is highly unusual, especially at RHS, where language courses are structured progressively. Students typically start with introductory courses and gradually advance to more advanced levels. However, Mukherjee’s exceptional language skills and unwavering commitment to learning allowed him to bypass an entire year of instruction.
“[It’s] extremely unusual. And especially at Revere, we have a graded system where we do intro to a language and then we do a quarter of the language and then a full year of the language and it’s a step by step process. And it’s a lot of material, thousands of vocabulary words, and lots of grammar. So it’s highly unusual for someone to do that amount of work on his own,” Neubert said.
With his sophomore year underway, Mukherjee will continue researching language and developing his own further.
